1) No information is currently available to the

IRBDC regarding the possible ill treatment and rape of Tamil women by the JVP in Sri Lanka

2) No specific information is available in published sources regularly consulted by the IRBDC regarding the ill treatment of members of the CWC or their families by either the JVP or LTTE. In general, the Indian Tamils have kept a low profile in Sri Lankan politics and have refused to be enlisted into separatist movements by the Jaffna Tamils. [Barbara Crossette, "A Sri Lankan Minority That Doesn't Do Battle", The New York Times, 16 June 1989.] They have instead supported their trade union, the Ceylon Workers Congress, whose leader, S. Thondaman, is the Sri Lankan Minister of Rural Industrial Development. [Rodney Tasker, "Under the surface calm", Far Eastern Economic Review, 28 May 1987.] According to Jeyaratnam Wilson, a Canadian scholar on Sri Lankan politics, the CWC essentially represents the current ruling party in Sri Lanka, the United National Party (UNP), in the tea plantation areas. Members of the UNP have been among the major targets of the JVP [Asia Watch, Cycles of Violence: Human Rights in Sri Lanka Since the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement, (Washington: Asia Watch Committee, 1987), p. 71-74.], but it is not clear whether the JVP has targetted members of the CWC because of its relationship with the ruling party.

A report published in The Manchester Guardian Weekly on 8 October 1989 stated that a strike by tea pluckers called by the JVP has paralysed Sri Lanka's tea plantation industry. [Chris Nuttal, "Tea strike adds to Sri Lanka despair", The Manchester Guardian, 8 October l189, p. 11.] According to Professor Bruce Matthews, a Canadian expert on Sri Lankan politics, the fact that it is the JVP which is enforcing the strike demonstrates that the CWC has been overpowered. The article from The Manchester Guardian Weekly further points out that the strike is being ruthlessly enforced by the JVP, and three planters have been killed, provoking many more to flee the plantations because of death threats. [Ibid.]

Professor Matthews further remarked that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have tried in the past to "crowd out" the CWC in the affairs of the plantation Tamils, but failed.

The information provided by Professors Matthews and Wilson cannot be corroborated in published sources by the IRBDC at the present time.